Excession
By Matt S Trout (mst) from northwestengland.pm, dahut.pm, drinkers.pm, lgbt.pm
Date: Saturday, 4 December 2010 14:10
Duration: 40 minutes
Language:
"The usual example given to illustrate an Outside Context Problem was imagining you were a tribe on a largish, fertile island; you'd tamed the land, invented the wheel or writing or whatever, the neighbours were cooperative or enslaved but at any rate peaceful and you were busy raising temples to yourself with all the excess productive capacity you had, you were in a position of near-absolute power and control which your hallowed ancestors could hardly have dreamed of and the whole situation was just running along nicely like a canoe on wet grass... when suddenly this bristling lump of iron appears sailless and trailing steam in the bay and these guys carrying long funny-looking sticks come ashore and announce you've just been discovered, you're all subjects of the Emperor now, he's keen on presents called tax and these bright-eyed holy men would like a word with your priests."
— Iain M. Banks
Attended by: Squeeky, Mike Whitaker (Penfold), fifi, Dave Cross (davorg), Colin Newell, David Faux, Nicholas Clark, Dagfinn Ilmari Mannsåker (ilmari), Gianni Ceccarelli (dakkar), James Mastros (theorbtwo), Torsten Raudssus (Getty), Daniel Lukasiak, Peter Haworth (pmh1wheel), Wendy Van Dijk (woolfy), Neil Hemingway (neilh), James Morris, Anatolie Mazur (Mask), Marco Fontani (mfontani), Johnathan Swan, Colin Campbell, Serife Hawkins-Ozer, James Aitken (LoonyPandora), Rosellyne Worrall (rozallin), Simon Williams, James Roberts, Tim Bunce, JJ Allen, Cass Johnston, Ben Martin, Andy Smith, Michael Jemmeson (michael), David Leadbeater (dg), Jerome Eteve (jeteve), Sveinn Sandvik Svendsen, Graham Seaman, Martin Evans (mjevans), Pedro Figueiredo (pfig), Colin Petrie, Alex Burzyński (AJGB), knewt,